Latest / From Chad / Reflecting #1218

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Reflecting #1218 · From Chad

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  A single writing assignment surfaced a 10 year old memory
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  and cracked it open. There's a story behind that.
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  This is your daily message from Chademur 12118 to upgrade your
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  mental game today by telling yourself a better story.
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  Because the most important story you hear is the story you tell
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  yourself. This message is dedicated to
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  Stephanie Sheris. Here's the upgrade.
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  A moment of kindness can sit unopened for years, but upgraded
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  thinking knows it was still delivered.
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  Here's the story. When Rika Masuda was seven, she
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  got a new bike. It was faster than her old one,
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  and at the park she headed straight for a wall because the
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  brakes didn't work. She crashed, bruising and
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  scraping her foot. A man in a suit walked over.
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  He was tall and strong, she remembers, and at first she
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  didn't know whether to trust him.
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  Then he asked, Are you OK? His voice was kind and gentle,
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  and that settled it. He washed the cut at a water
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  fountain. He let her use his phone to call
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  her grandfather, and while they waited, he pulled out a sheet of
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  white paper and taught her to fold an origami crane.
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  He folded it cleanly and carefully, and Rica later
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  guessed he wanted her thinking about the paper instead of her
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  foot. When her grandfather arrived,
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  the man helped get her in the bike home and at the party.
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  He handed her the crane without a word and walked away.
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  She never saw him again. She put the crane in her desk.
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  For 10 years, she never unfolded it.
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  Then, at 17, her high school English teacher, Benjamin
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  Johnson, assigned a story about a Good Samaritan encounter.
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  Rica thought of the man in the suit.
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  She went home, sat down and unfolded the crane.
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  Inside was a well known Japanese expression that means to
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  treasure moments because they may never happen again.
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  A stranger left a note where he knew someone would eventually
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  look and he didn't need to see the result.
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  Reflection is a technology. It works like a tool, and most
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  of us never pick it up. The better story to tell
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  yourself is reflecting on a past.
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  Kindness can open a beautiful lesson.
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  Plant a seed on someone else's schedule.
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  The harvest is rarely on your calendar.
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  Say the right thing once, then trust the timing.
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  An act of kindness and a tangible gift can make a more
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  lasting lesson than a lecture. He didn't explain coping to A7
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  year old. He folded paper with her and the
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  lesson traveled inside. Something beautiful.
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  And people can hold beautiful things a lot more easily than
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  they can hold a speech. Tell me a story of a moment you
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  didn't know mattered until later to from chadsmith@gmail.com.
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  Send someone a text and ask them what's in your desk drawer that
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  you haven't unfolded yet. You can get a free copy of my
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  book, The Most Powerful Story in the World, by going to from
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  chad.gumroad.com. The transcript of this message
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  and hundreds of others are always available at
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  www.fromchad.com.